WELLS, FRANCIS F.

WELLS, FRANCIS F. (ca. 1800–1866). Francis F. Wells, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, was born in Virginia about 1800. He moved to Texas from Louisiana and on July 21, 1824, received title to a league and a labor of land in present Brazoria and Jackson counties. The Mexican census of March 1826 listed him as a doctor, a married man with a wife (née Martha McNutt), and between sixteen and twenty-five. On November 14, 1829, the ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin granted him a license to practice medicine in Texas. In July 1830 the ayuntamiento also appointed Wells a member of the new board of medical examiners. In 1832 Wells and his sister-in-law, Mrs. Pamelia (Parmelia) McNutt Porter, founded the town of Texana in Jackson County. Wells laid off the townsite into residential and business lots. On July 17, 1835, Wells was present at the Lavaca-Navidad Meeting. In 1838 he was a participant at a political meeting that nominated Peter W. Grayson for president of the republic. Wells had one son, who later fought in the Confederate army and served as county clerk and judge. In 1851 Wells deeded a lot in Texana to be used by the local Methodist church. He died in Jackson County, and his will was filed for probate on December 10, 1866.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897). Pat Ireland Nixon, The Medical Story of Early Texas, 1528–1853 (Lancaster, Pennsylvania: Lupe Memorial Fund, 1946). Ira T. Taylor, The Cavalcade of Jackson County (San Antonio: Naylor, 1938). Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.